


Toward The Flood

by nightcamedown



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, I Think Maybe Zombies Are Implied, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-22
Updated: 2012-09-22
Packaged: 2017-11-23 15:49:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightcamedown/pseuds/nightcamedown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wears perfume dabbed at her wrists, at the pulse points of her neck, and the scent precedes her soft footfalls by a heartbeat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Toward The Flood

**Author's Note:**

> Apocalypse noir-ish ficlet written for andrezel's [Prompt Game](http://andrezel.tumblr.com/post/32062613612/prompt-game-reminder) on Tumblr. Originally posted [here](http://harry-le-roy.tumblr.com/post/32096053788/he-smells-ophelia-before-he-sees-her-she-wears).

He smells Ophelia before he sees her. She wears perfume dabbed at her wrists, at the pulse points of her neck, and the scent precedes her soft footfalls by a heartbeat. “Still out here?”

Hamlet gives the last of the torches an unnecessary tug. It’s as secure as when he put it there, half an hour ago. ”Just finishing now.”

She nods. She lifts a hand as if to lay it on his arm, then lets it fall back to her side. “That’s good. Time to wash up for dinner. They’ll be waiting.”

He grits his teeth against the thought and says nothing. All that incense, covering the smell of rot. All that tarnished silver, and everybody pretending it’s gold.

”It’ll be dark soon.”

He glances at her out of the corner of his eye. She’s as beautiful as ever, not that it matters anymore. “There was a car earlier. Any news?”

She shakes her head. “No, not this afternoon.”

Gas is hard to come by. Nobody drove all the way out here to sight-see. “Not even a letter?”

She shakes her head again, keeping her eyes fixed on the horizon. “Nothing. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Hang tomorrow.”

Words, words, words. They’re meaningless, and she lets the breeze carry them away like so many dry leaves. Then she turns toward him with a smile, and continues as if he hadn't spoken. “Won’t you come in for dinner?”

“Can’t.”

“But the others…”

“Hang the others!” Fury ignites in his heart, for the first time in weeks. He wants to sit down, wants to curl up around it, wants to shelter it from the reaching darkness like he’d shield a match from the wind.

Maybe she can sense how bad he needs to hold on to that feeling, because her next words don’t have much force. ”It’ll be dark soon,” she says softly. “Please come inside.”

“To do what? Put on my brave face? Drink what’s left of the wine? Make small talk like a child, speaking in riddles?” He wheels on her, catching her by the wrist, digging his nails into the soft flesh of the hand she didn't have the guts to put on his arm. “To dance around the thing that no one will say—the one damn thing left still worth talking about?”

With her free hand she cracks him hard across the jaw, then twists out of his grip, catching his ankle with her sharp little heel for good measure. He loves her for it, a little. Not that it matters anymore.

She doesn't run, though; she just steps out of arm’s reach and watches him with wide eyes. He rubs one hand against his face, sure the skin is turning red, pleased at the thought of bearing her mark all night. “No, I will not come inside. You say it’s getting dark. Do you think I can’t see it? That I can’t feel it under my skin?” He spits on the ground by her feet, and it blooms pinkish against the gray stone. “Yet you ask me to come in and smile, and be a devil. I say I won’t do it.”

“Please don’t do anything stupid.”

He doubts that stupid and smart are meaningful distinctions at this stage of the game. “Where are the things that I brought back last week?”

Oh, she doesn't like that. He can see it in the set of her jaw, in the way her eyes narrow before she answers, begrudgingly, “In the store room, on the bottom shelf.”

“Bring me the sack.” He wonders if she’ll do as he says. The things that used to matter, like being a prince, don’t matter anymore; on the other hand, here’s a woman who wakes up and ties back her hair and straps a gun to her thigh, then puts sweet violet on her wrists. Maybe the things that used to matter are the only things that matter, in this frigid place at the edge of the world-that-was. “There’s a light in a case. And some batteries.”

“Don’t do this.” There’s her hand, finally, small and warm when it catches his own. “You can’t leave me here.”

He’s going to, though, and they both know it.

If there’s anyone he’d stay for, it’s her. But there’s not anyone, or anything, that would keep him in this den of lies, not with the shadows and half-truths beckoning from just beyond the horizon. She knows it, knew it before her daddy and her brother warned her, knew it before Horatio started watching him with that mournful look in his eyes. She’s known it from the beginning.

Still. He leans into her touch, and the anger in his heart burns down to embers. “Oh my dear. You’re right, of course I can’t.”

Hope flares in her eyes, dies when she meets his gaze.

“I can’t leave you. Not here. Not when this is all that you've known. Not when you shrink from the cars on the drive and the shadows on the lawn and the shade of mortality you think walks two steps behind me.” He whispers the last against the shell of her ear. “I can’t leave you in the dark.”

She turns her face against his chest and breathes in.

He presses a kiss to her hairline. “I have to strike out in it: to bring back a little light to leave you when I’m gone.”

She steps away after a moment, pausing to brush her tears off his jacket. She stops in the doorway and says, calmly, over her shoulder, “It’s getting dark.”


End file.
